well, the hottest summer ever recorded in Japan is over, and it's starting to cool off here in this corner of the world, bit by bit. apparently there's once again snow on Mt. Fuji now, but I can't say for sure because i can't see it through the clouds between Fuji & my apartment. when it really starts to cool down, i think i'm gonna plug in my super Japanese toilet for the 1st time because i want the seat warmer on 24/7.
we also had typhoons #9 & #10 (they don't name these things), but those aren't a big deal. #10 didn't even pass over my part of this volcanic island chain on a rock flying through space.
there's been an international incident over here between China & Japan, which i imagine hasn't made the American news cycle yet. HAS IT? people are kinda pissed about it over here. as for me, i dont have much of an opinion on it.
personally, i'm alot more interested in this even though admittedly it has absolutely nothing to do with Japan. having found solutions for all other problems in the world and therefore having alot of free time, the UN selected earth's first ambassador to other species from beyond the milky way. yep, planet earth now has an official representative for dealing with aliens from space, maybe the UN knows something that we don't??? hmm.
other than that....
it's just business as usual here, really. which is why i've been suffering from some major writers block lately with this blog. i'm not saying i want to quit the blog, because that would be dumb. but nothing spectacularly interesting has happened since Tokyo Blipfest. my Japanese life has been shockingly ordinary lately,
to give just one example, sometimes I:
1.) get an electric bill in the mail
2.) pay the electric bill (that came in the mail)
3.) think about using less air conditioning
as i mentioned in my last post, i wasn't able to go to the 2010 Tokyo Game Show, an annual video game convention which is famous around the world, with people from EVERYWHERE showing up for it. My friend who did go had some really thrilling stories of waiting in line for 4 hours before the doors opened and waiting for an hour in each line to play any games. I WANTED TO STAND IN THOSE LINES TOO
the reason i couldn't go was a last minute Saturday work order to attend a school sports day, i don't have much to say about it honestly, pretty much your average kids' track meet with more ceremony, bowing and military marching than the American version. my expert source (i.e. just some guy) says these things were originally started as military excercises, you know, just to make kids miserable and/or get them ready for WW2. true or untrue? i don't know, how much do you trust just some guy?
anyway, today when I was on the train, 3 sumo wrestlers in kimono got on too. if i'm reading the flyers around my neighborhood right (i'm probably not) i think there's an upcoming sumo event right here in my own town, so that'll be cool if that's actually what the flyers mean. i'm gonna get one translated tomorrow.
but until/if that tournament happens, i don't have anything to say. I've been thinking of writing posts that aren't time sensitive when i'm feeling particularly motivated, then publishing them during the slow times. or just posting some pictures of my latest culinary catastrophes, although those images would be extremely offensive to any human being with eyes that likes food of any kind. of course until i actually produce something, this is just me talking to myself.
so stay tuned for my write-up of the sumo tournament!**
gaijin who writes this
--signatures go here
**the sumo tournament may very well be a figment of my imagination caused by my Japanese illiteracy
2010. 9. 25.
2010. 9. 15.
2010. 9. 11.
barbarian at the tea party
but it is a pretty good idea right guys?
the last week was mildly interesting here in Japan, we had the 9th typhoon of the year (these really aren't a big deal) and it passed over my part of the country before dying out. But they usually don't name storms over here, just give them numbers. We also had an earthquake drill at school. and i went to a tea ceremony, which is about as exciting as it sounds i.e. a totally off the wall bonkers adventure (with tea)
now back in college when i really had a boner for everything Japan related, the tea ceremony was something i wanted to see. i told everyone who'd listen 'see, this country's so cool they've got a ceremony for drinking a cup of fucking tea' but years later, i'd kind of forgotten about the tea ceremony. the only ceremony i perform with tea is digging through my pockets for change for the vending machine. so when i was invited to this one, i realized that i actually hadn't seen a legit one before, so i jumped at the opportunity and by that i mean i thought about it for 2 days before i decided to go.
it was sunday, so honestly what the fuck else are you gonna do, right? that factored into my decision.
this was actually my first time in a Japanese person's house. made some pretty good faux-pas('s?) too, i always try my best to make sure i do something wrong, you know, just so the people will remember me.
the next time i go to a Japanese house, i'll just say "it's gonna be a shockingly offensive evening, so let me just apologize now. i only know how to be polite in my own culture, btw your wife's hot."
when i took off my outside shoes, i touched the inside shoes with my hand, so i had to go back outside and purify my hands and for some reason, my mouth....? i don't remember saying anything bad....in fact pretty much the only thing i said the whole time was 'sorry,' repeatedly, over and over again. maybe they thought i was such an idiot for touching the shoes that i should purify my mouth pre-emptively to make up for the stupid shit i was inevitably going to say at some point.
also don't point at the altar, or even in the general direction of the altar or in any direction where you might be construed as maybe pointing at the altar or even thinking about maybe pointing about the altar. just trust me on that one.
the altar's for dead relatives and pointing is rude here! if someone in the western world invited you to their house for dinner, you wouldn't give the middle finger to their dad's ashes would you? i don't know, maybe you would, i'm not you.
My Japanese teacher's mom is also a teacher, a teacher of the tea ceremony. so this thing was being put on by her students, so they were all really deliberate and such about what they were doing. if you go to a serious ceremony like this one, i can tell you that you'll end up bowing no less than 2,605 times (i counted).
why is it so serious? i accuse this thing of having spiritual/ritualistic undertones related to Shinto, which i know fuck all about, so i'm not qualified to speak on it. i also accuse my parents.
THE TEA CEREMONY IS PRETTY SHORT ACTUALLY
1.) go sit in the garden
2.) the ceremony people come in so get ready to bow like, 2,605 times seriously damn
3.) eat sweets while the person makes tea and the host explains everything in Japanese. (seriously, eat them. it's gonna help you deal with step 4)
4.) drink some really unpleasant tea -- DO NOT VOMIT!
5.) bow some more, leave
6.) get in your car and go to CoCo's Curry House on Route 20, because it's awesome and all extra toppings are just 100 yen
total time: 15 minutes (+45 minutes at CoCo's because they really take their goddamn time. i'd get irritated if it wasn't so good)
and that was my sunday. experiencing new cultural things is always good i think, even if you do it little by little, and even if you don't end up liking whatever you went to go see. i actually thought the tea ceremony was interesting though, i'd go again, just not like every weekend or something. and on top of that, my previous question is still valid: what else are you gonna do on a sunday?
well if you live in Japan, your answer might be: the 2010 Tokyo Game Show.
Ever heard about TGS? it's famous. it's Japan's annual version of E3 basically, where new games are debuted and every Japanese & foreign nerd descends on Tokyo to see games, play games, buy games, and stand in 3 hour lines for EVERYTHING. the doors open at 10, people are already lining up by 6. TGS 2010 is next weekend, and Monday is a national holiday. i think i'm going! i mean on the one hand, it's gonna be a real pain in the ass to wake up so early to try to get in, but on the other hand, i really love standing in 3 hour lines so....
--gaijin who writes this
signatures go here
2010. 9. 6.
file under: 'why not?'
so i decided to stop smoking those 4 foot tall cigarettes that i carried like a torch a few weeks ago, in an effort to pass the time while my rice was cooking, i watched these videos on Penny Arcade TV. they weren't too bad, it certainly starts out pretty ghey but picks up as it goes along. anyway the videos were about 'chiptune' music, something which i was only vaguely familiar with (from hanging out too much at the college radio station) but hadn't really listened to. if you wanna know what chiptune is all about, you could watch the video at penny arcade, or google it, or even just keep on reading (the words on this page).
chiptune is what happens when people take apart old nintendos or famikoms (the Japanese version) or reprogram gameboys to make music with the 8-bit soundcards. or 16 or more bits for those using something above an NES. but the 8-bit sounds usually aren't the only element of the music, in fact that's the worst kind of chiptune there is, after all, if all people wanted to hear was an entire song composed of 8-bit sounds, they would buy an old game on the Wii Shop. most people making chiptune use the video gamey sounds to make VERY AVERAGE techno. my first thoughts after finishing the chiptune movie were somewhere between /shrug and 'meh....' but one thing i did notice was that alot of the artists were from Japan, so i googled a few, and noticed that alot of them were playing on the 4th. indeed, from the 3rd to 6th was the 1st ever Tokyo Blip (just another name for the same thing) festival. so i said 'meh' one more time, called up my friend in Tokyo and made plans, because i knew i wouldn't have anything better to do.
if the idea of completely taking apart old computers to make music sounds nerdy, it pretty much is. but one of my friends has been telling me that Japan is the place where you don't have to be embarassed about being a nerd, you can do whatever you want and not be judged by it. so i went to the chiptune show. we went friday and saturday night. the pre-party was at this really tiny venue in western Tokyo that we must've walked past about 4 times without seeing. i think that's the way to tell how hip and underground a place in Tokyo is: lack of a sign, and inside, it's a total dump.
we got there in time to catch the tail end of a bad set. there was a "girl" playing chiptune with just the 8-bit noise, "she" even covered the legend of zelda theme....why would you do that? we've heard it over 15 years ago and you can't do any better....? btw are you wondering why those 2 gendered pronouns were in "quotes?" it's because "she" used to be a "man."
next up was a guy named BokusatsuShoujoKoubou, BSK if you prefer, from Fukuoka. he was ok. he gave us some stickers with his logo, which is a really cool Japanese demon thing, i put one on my backpack then took it off after running the Kanji through a dictionary and finding out what his name meant
bokusatsu (-suru verb) beat to death
shoujo little girl
koubou workshop
that would've been a bad scene, walking around with that on my backpack. thankfully i have an IPHONE, with a free dictionary app only available for IPHONE (and iPad, if you're an asshole and have one). I also really enjoyed the idiot who played after BSK, he wrecked his gameboy and sampler halfway through his set in a fit of joy, the gameboy was on display for the rest of the night too, he completely shattered the screen. and that was friday
saturday was better. it was in a different part of town, in another basement venue, but this one was much more spacious. we saw YMCK? YMCK is well known enough in Japan to be on Japanese Itunes, also, they programmed their own iPhone app. but what do they sound like? crap, basically, although your mileage may vary. just search YMCK on youtube. Blogger didn't want to upload my videos. but it's 2 guys and a girl who really overdo the whole NES nostalgia/fetish and present it in a way that's a little too cutesy Japanesey for my taste. when something's this hard to listen to (IMO) even heavy drinking during their set doesn't help you.
i have another shitty video too of saturday night's headliner. i think he was using the soundcard from a Commodore64? anyways, it also wouldn't upload. his name was Trash80. you can youtube him? you know you could also watch the professionally produced movie that i linked to at the beginning....
yeah, kinda upset about the videos not uploading, because i really didn't take any pictures, it was dark and iPhone cams dont have a flash
despite all the video failures, it was still a pretty good weekend. i definitely had nothing better to do at any rate, and going to Tokyo is always guaranteed fun fun enjoy times. i bought a t-shirt, can your boring weekend top that? i'm glad i saw those videos on PATV and decided to go to this thing, after all, Tokyo is famous for its music scene among other things and this was my first experience with that. i wanna go again, but not before i buy a handicam or something else that does a decent job recording sound, and maybe a new blogging site that can upload a video?
--gaijin who writes
this signatures go here
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